Nonlinear Event-Triggered Platooning Control with Exponential Convergence∗

In this paper the control of a platoon with a nonlinear controller under event-triggered communication is investigated. The proposed nonlinear controller is a predecessor-following controller for a certain class of nonlinear functions. For the event-triggered communication scheme every agent decides based on its own state when it transmits its state information. Therefore, a trigger rule is designed that guarantees exponential convergence of the state error while it excludes Zeno behavior. The results are extended to allow heterogeneous trigger rules under certain conditions. Furthermore the case of heterogeneous controllers is analyzed and exponential convergence and exclusion of Zeno behavior is still guaranteed. The theoretical results of the paper are supported by numerical simulations.